Where do writers, editors, and for that matter critics go from here? How do we make art under these conditions? One’s answer to such questions is inextricable from one’s politics more broadly, from one’s view of what we owe each other, whether the rich deserve their spoils, and the extent to which workers should determine the course of their lives.
The novelty of that control was thrilling to those of us raised on vinyl. Suddenly, anyone with a cheap tape player could record music, sequence it, distribute it, and—perhaps most powerfully—erase it and replace it with something else. Largely viewed as a nostalgic totem these days, the cassette tape was revelatory and revolutionary in its time; its disruptive power anticipated the even greater tectonic shift that the digital age would bring to music.
Today, Nyangai is disappearing before his very eyes, swallowed up by the relentless sea. As recently as ten years ago, it still measured some 2,300 feet from end to end. What's left today is a patch of sand barely 300 feet long and 250 wide. The forests are gone, swamped by saltwater. The soccer field lies under water for 22 hours of the day. And the land on which Charlie's family home once stood, the home he was born in, has long since vanished beneath the waves. In as little as two years, Charlie fears, Nyangai may no longer exist at all.
"It's getting worse and worse," says Charlie, a father of six who has lived in a makeshift home of sticks and tarpaulin since his previous home was washed away. "There's nowhere to go to the toilet. There's nowhere to be free. Whenever the water's high the place floods all over. It never used to happen like this."
But braille has had a revival during the past decade. Technology such as refreshable braille displays has made the script more portable and adaptable, and increasingly braille is being integrated into the community beyond books. For braille advocates, there is no substitute for braille when it relates to the literacy and communication skills of the vision-impaired.
When I heard about plane yoga, I was skeptical. Not just because I thought it was silly (though I did), but because it didn’t seem possible. Forget lengthening and bending into a blissful warrior three pose—being on a plane means contorting your body just to exist.
Yet those tight quarters are exactly the reason why yoga (well, an abbreviated version of yoga) could be useful on flights. Sitting for long periods of time can make you tight and even carries risks of blood clots, and stretching helps blood to flow.
Kinderland is not just an extraordinary look at life in Europe’s edgelands (“our poor and unhappy country”) – it’s also a powerful novel, full of surprising imagery and beautiful writing.